The UAE and Phillipines have inked a new bilateral. Emirates will be meeting with Phillipines Aviation Authorities at the end of April to apply for more frequencies and destinations.

I would expect them to raise the existing 6x weekly to Manila to a daily at least, and probably add another 2-3 weeklies departing DXB around 0300, enabling good connections with the European arrivals. Look out for Cebu to be a potential new destination to be added over the next year or so.

I have heard Qatar has also been granted some extra weekly frequencies into MNL and they've been granted permission to operate to the cities of Cebu and Clark - nonstop from Doha. Qatar - heard anything ?

Regarding Cebu hmmm, im not quiet sure if there will be enough market for this route for EK. I know theres a lot of Filipinos in the UAE however I dont see the market for it. Besides, PR is currently codesharing with EK to DXB. maybe EK will just codeshare with PR on the MNL-CBU run or to any point in the Philippines.

As for clark, im quiet worried about this airport, it seems to have little interest from carriers due to its distance from Manila.

Qatar Airways will add one more flight to MNL from DOH and the flights are likely to go either non stop or from KUL rather than through BKK. Don't know about Cebu and Clark though. How big is clark anyway?

Subic Bay is the FedEx hub in Asia. UPS has signed an agreement for Clark............."supposed" to start operations in June-Aug. The Clark field is in disrepair, and will need a lot of work done. There is no need for any direct international (pax) flights into Clark.............there is nothing there, unless your target market is middle-aged white men who can't get laid anywhere else. Cebu is a 35 minute flight from MNL, there is no need for direct service unless you have a plane load of Chinese (the island is full of them).

If i recally correctly, Gulf Air flew into Cebu a few years ago with A340s, nonstop from the Gulf and failed miserably. I don't know how viable this route is for Gulf carriers from a yield perspective. I would suspect the bulk of the traffic would be low yield Y class plus some cargo.

I don't know much about Clark, but i would suspect its the same situation as Cebu. I think the Gulf carriers should focus on MNL and then let the local carriers carry traffic onward domestically.

An additional piece of info on Emirates services. At the moment Emirates only has 3x weekly services, with the other 3x weekly allocated to Phillipine Airlines. However, Emirates is operating these frequencies on PR's behalf and code-sharing.